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March 2021 Adult Top 10 Picks

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  1. The Lost Village
    by Camilla Sten
    9781250249258
    Minotaur Books
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback
    The Lost Village
    by Camilla Sten
    9781250249258
    Minotaur Books
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Hardback

    *BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER FOR THE YEAR* for NPR

    "Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." - New York Times book review

    "[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to Shirley Jackson." - South Florida Sun Sentinel

    A Most Anticipated Book Goodreads * Publishers Weekly * Crime Reads * Popsugar * Bookish * #1 Loanstar Pick in Canada

    An Indie Next pick!

    A Library Reads Pick!

    The Blair Witch Project     meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.

    Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

    But there will be no turning back.

    Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:

    They are not alone.

    They’re looking for the truth…
    But what if it finds them first?

    Come find out.

    "RELENTLESSLY CREEPY." —Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger (An NPR Best Horror Novel)

    "IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP READING." —Ragnar Jonasson, author of The Island

    "Readers will revel in the chills." - Booklist

    View this title on BNC CataList
  2. Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted
    by Gary Barwin Canada
    9780735279520
    Random House Canada
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Jewish
    Hardback
    Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted
    by Gary Barwin Canada
    9780735279520
    Random House Canada
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Jewish
    Hardback
    A middle-aged Jewish man who fantasizes about being a cowboy goes on an eccentric quest across Europe after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Lithuania in this wild and witty yet heartrending novel from the bestselling author of Yiddish for Pirates, shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

    Motl is middle-aged, poor, nerdy, Jewish and in desperate need of a shave. Since having his balls shot cleanly off as a youth in WWI, he's lived a quiet life at home in Vilnius with his shrewd and shrewish mom, Gitl, losing himself in the masculine fantasy world of cowboy novels by writers like Karl May--novels equally loved by Hitler, whose troops have just invaded Lithuania and are out to exterminate people like Motl. In his dreams, Motl is a fast-talking, rugged, expert gunslinger capable of dealing with the Nazi threat. But only in his dreams.

    As friends and neighbours are killed around them, Motl and Gitl escape from Vilnius, saving their own skins. But they immediately risk everything to try rescue relatives they hope are still alive. With death all around him, Motl decides that a Jew's best revenge is not only to live, but to procreate. In order to achieve this, though, he must relocate those most crucial pieces of his anatomy lost to him in a glacier in the Swiss Alps in the previous war. It's an absurd yet life-affirming mission, made even more urgent when he's separated from his mother, and isn't sure whether she's alive or dead. Joining forces, and eventually hearts, with Esther, a Jewish woman whose family has been killed, Motl ventures across Europe, a kaleidoscope of narrow escapes and close encounters with everyone from Himmler, to circus performers, double agents, quislings, fake "Indians" and real ones. Motl at last figures out that he has more connection to the Indigenous characters in western novels than the cowboys.

    An imaginative and deeply felt exploration of genocide, persecution, colonialism and masculinity--saturated in Gary Barwin's sharp wit and perfect pun-play--Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy is a one-of-a-kind novel of sheer genius.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  3. Acts of Desperation
    by Megan Nolan
    9780316429856
    Little, Brown and Company
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Coming of Age
    Hardback
    Acts of Desperation
    by Megan Nolan
    9780316429856
    Little, Brown and Company
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Coming of Age
    Hardback
    Heralding the arrival of “a huge literary talent” (Karl Ove Knausgaard), Megan Nolan’s riveting debut is “a blistering anti-romance” (Catherine Lacey) about love addiction and what it does to us.

    Wouldn’t I do anything to reverse my loss, the absence of him?

    In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her…

    Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission, between escaping degradation and eroticizing it, between loving and being lovable. With unsettling, electric precision, Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, and how do we want it?

    Heralding the arrival of a stunning new literary talent, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, and power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.

    "Hot as viscera." —The New Republic
    View this title on BNC CataList
  4. My Mother's Daughter
    by Perdita Felicien Canada
    9780385689960
    Doubleday Canada
    Mar 30, 2021
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    My Mother's Daughter
    by Perdita Felicien Canada
    9780385689960
    Doubleday Canada
    Mar 30, 2021
    BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs
    Hardback
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    "A phenomenal, human story. . . . I could not put this book down." —CLARA HUGHES

    An instant national bestseller, this raw and affecting memoir is the story of a mother and daughter who beat the odds together.

    Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes—she carried her mother Catherine's dreams.

    In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance. They ask her to come to Canada to be their nanny—and she accepts.

    This was the beginning of Catherine's new life: a life of opportunity, but also suffering. Within a few years, she would find herself pregnant a third time—this time in her new country with no family to support her, and this time, with Perdita. Together, in the years to come, mother and daughter would experience racism, domestic abuse, and even homelessness, but Catherine's will would always pull them through.

    As Perdita grew and began to discover her preternatural athletic gifts, she was edged onward by her mother's love, grit, and faith. Facing literal and figurative hurdles, she learned to leap and pick herself back up when she stumbled. This book is a daughter's memoir—a book about the power of a parent's love to transform their child's life.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  5. The Girls Are All So Nice Here
    by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Canada
    9781982145026
    Simon & Schuster
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    The Girls Are All So Nice Here
    by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn Canada
    9781982145026
    Simon & Schuster
    Mar 09, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

    Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.

    A lot has changed in the years since Ambrosia Wellington graduated from college, and she’s worked hard to create a new life for herself. But then an invitation to her ten-year reunion arrives in the mail, along with an anonymous note that reads “We need to talk about what we did that night.”

    It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she’d believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything.

    At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused—the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding. And it was all because of the game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else, and the girl who paid the price.

    Alternating between the reunion and Amb’s freshman year, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a shocking novel about the brutal lengths girls can go to get what they think they’re owed, and what happens when the games we play in college become matters of life and death.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  6. Meet Me in Paradise
    by Libby Hubscher
    9780593199428
    Berkley
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
    Paperback / softback
    Meet Me in Paradise
    by Libby Hubscher
    9780593199428
    Berkley
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Romance / Contemporary
    Paperback / softback
    Marin Cole has never:
    Seen the ocean
    Climbed a mountain
    Taken a risk on love
    ....But if her sister's plan works, she just might do all three.

    Ever since her journalist mother died on assignment, Marin has played it safe, refusing to set foot outside the state of Tennessee. Her wild-child younger sister, Sadie, has trotted the globe as a photographer, living off of art and adrenaline.

    When Sadie returns from a tough assignment abroad and looks a little worse for wear, Marin reluctantly agrees to a sisters' spa weekend on the tropical island of Saba. But her lifelong fear of travel is affirmed when Sadie misses the flight, Marin's luggage gets mixed up with another passenger's, and an episode of turbulence sends her hurtling into the lap of Lucas Tsai, the handsome stranger who stole her sister's seat.

    For the first time in a long time, Marin has to step outside of her comfort zone as she explores the island with Lucas and learns what she's been missing out on. With each breathtaking new experience, Marin gets closer to her real self, the man she’s falling for, and the heart-wrenching truth about why she’s there in the first place.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  7. Central Park
    by Guillaume Musso
    9780316590969
    Back Bay Books
    Mar 16, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    Central Park
    by Guillaume Musso
    9780316590969
    Back Bay Books
    Mar 16, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    From the #1 international bestselling author: a woman wakes up on a Central Park bench with no memory of how she got there in this “unpredictable and moving psychological thriller that keeps you holding your breath” (Métro)

    Alice, a fierce and respected Parisian cop, wakes up on a Central Park bench with no memory of the night before, handcuffed to a complete stranger—a musician named Gabriel. Disoriented, dazed, and with someone else’s blood on her shirt, Alice works furiously to reconnect the dots. She remembers clubbing with her friends the night before on the Champs-Élysées. Gabriel claims he was playing a gig in Dublin. Was she drugged? Kidnapped? Why is the gun in her jacket pocket missing a bullet? And whose blood is on her clothes?

    Over the next twenty-four hours, Alice and Gabriel race across New York in search of answers, stumbling upon a startling set of clues that point to a terrible adversary from the past. Alice must finally confront her memories of hunting the serial killer who took everything from her—a man she thought was dead, until now.

    From France's #1 bestselling author, Central Park is a taut and suspenseful thriller that will keep readers riveted until its final shocking twist.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  8. Never Have I Ever
    by L.V. Hay
    9781529337723
    Hodder
    Jul 06, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    Never Have I Ever
    by L.V. Hay
    9781529337723
    Hodder
    Jul 06, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback

    Never Have I Ever been punished for what I have done . . .

    'An unsettling whirlwind of a novel with a startlingly dark core. 5 Stars' Sun on The Other Twin

    Twenty years ago

    Four teenagers discover a new game.

    They add their own rules, going from sharing secrets to sharing firsts.

    And then it all goes spiraling out of control.


    Now

    A woman gets a note through her door which chills her blood

    'Never have I ever been punished for what I have done'

    She thought this was over. But it looks like it's her turn to play

    Because no matter how far it goes, you have to obey the rules of the game. And the game is never really over.

    'Well written, engrossing and brilliantly unique, this is a fab debut' Heat on The Other Twin

    View this title on BNC CataList
  9. Flight
    by Laura Griffin
    9780593197349
    Berkley
    Mar 30, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    Flight
    by Laura Griffin
    9780593197349
    Berkley
    Mar 30, 2021
    FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
    Paperback / softback
    One tenacious local detective can only get the help he needs from a former forensic photographer with a serial killer on the loose in the new romantic thriller from New York Times bestselling author Laura Griffin.

    When former forensic photographer Miranda Rhoads moves to the seaside town of Lost Beach, she's decided to make her living as a wildlife photographer and put crime scenes behind her. But her plans are quickly upended when one morning, she comes across a couple sleeping in a canoe, entwined in an embrace. Looking closer, she realizes the man and woman aren't asleep—they’ve been murdered.

    Detective Joel Breda sets out to find answers--not only about the unidentified victims in the marshy death scene, but also about the aloof and beautiful photographer who seems to know more about his investigation than he does.

    As they begin to unravel the motivation of a merciless serial killer, Miranda and Joel must race against the clock to make an arrest before the killer can find them first.
    View this title on BNC CataList
  10. The Relatives
    by Camilla Gibb Canada
    9780385678094
    Doubleday Canada
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
    Hardback
    The Relatives
    by Camilla Gibb Canada
    9780385678094
    Doubleday Canada
    Mar 23, 2021
    FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
    Hardback
    From the renowned author of Sweetness in the Belly, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and This Is Happy, comes a bold, urgent and richly imagined novel about what it means to be a family in our modern world.

    Lila is on a long, painful journey toward motherhood. Tess and Emily are reeling after their ugly separation and fighting over ownership of the embryos that were supposed to grow their family together. And thousands of miles away, the unknown man who served as anonymous donor to them all is being held in captivity in Somalia. While his life remains in precarious balance, his genetic material is a source of both creation and conflict.

    What does it mean to be a family in our rapidly shifting world? What are our responsibilities to each other with increasing options for how to create a family?

    As these characters grapple with life-altering changes, they will find themselves interconnected in ways they cannot have imagined, and forced to redefine what family means to them.
    View this title on BNC CataList

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